Telegram Opened 700,000 Crypto Wallets in 48 Hours and Toncoin Still Fell 12% in a Week. Why Isn’t the Price Following?
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Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced on X that more than 700,000 self-custodial wallets were created on Telegram within 48 hours. These wallets let users hold their own keys, so Telegram can’t access their funds. However, despite this surge in wallet creation, the Toncoin price has taken a hit. Gram (CRYPTO: TON), the token renamed from Toncoin in June, fell 12.4% over the past week.
Gram trades at $1.04 as of November 9, down 1.5% over 24 hours and 28.7% over 30 days. The token closed at its lowest level of the past year on November 8 and trades 87% below its all-time high of $8, set in June 2024. So why isn’t the price rising with the number of wallets?
Durov’s 700,000 Figure Counts Wallets Created Before Any Gram Arrives
Durov’s figure of 700,000 refers to the number of new wallets created inside the Telegram app. Telegram shared the number directly, without third-party verification from a blockchain explorer. Telegram also serves as both the network’s main manager and its biggest validator, so it promotes Gram and controls the user statistics the market reads.
According to Durov, “a wallet activates the moment someone receives Grams.” A wallet with no tokens sent to it stays inactive, and Telegram hasn’t said how many of the new wallets have received funds.
This isn’t the first disconnect between wallet creation and token price. When Telegram launched a self-custodial wallet for U.S. users in July 2025, the token’s price had already surged before most users even opened their wallets. In another case, a network won a default spot in a major wallet, but its coin still fell.
An Empty Wallet Holds Zero Gram and Buys Zero Gram
Newly created wallets don’t automatically hold any Gram; they are simply pairs of keys without funds. A new wallet costs nothing and moves no money, so the reported count may include many empty accounts. Even when a friend sends Grams to activate a wallet, that only shifts existing tokens between users. The price feels the impact only when new buyers enter the market to purchase tokens.
Furthermore, most trading happens on exchange order books without touching the blockchain. So a network full of new, empty wallets might look busy while the order books show sellers in control. Total value locked in TON, the money held in apps on the network, has also declined sharply from its 2024 peak, according to DefiLlama data.
Gram Fell 12.4% While Bitcoin Fell 3%, So Who Has to Buy?
The broader market plays a part in Gram’s decline. Over the same week, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) fell 3%, Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) dropped 6%, and Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) slid 6.8%. However, Gram’s 12.4% drop exceeded all of these, pointing to Gram-specific selling.
The gap grows wider over 30 days. Bitcoin lost 9.7%, Ethereum dropped 14.9%, and Solana fell 20.5%, while Gram declined 28.7%. Its market value stands at around $3 billion, making it the 33rd-largest cryptocurrency. Only a handful of coins have gained over the past year, and Gram isn’t among them.
Interest in trading TON has also risen without boosting the price. By November 3, TON futures volume had surged tenfold. Futures track the price without anyone owning the coins, so more futures activity doesn’t mean more buyers in the spot market, and Gram has kept losing value since.
For the Toncoin price to follow the wallet surge, new money has to arrive. New wallet users would need to convert cash into Grams within Telegram, exchange buyers would need to absorb the sellers, and businesses and apps would need to keep Gram balances. The same gap showed up when a U.S. bank added Ripple’s stablecoin while XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) barely moved, and when two bank-focused coins moved in opposite directions.
Does the Wallet Surge Mean the Toncoin Price Has Found a Floor?
Not yet. Price and flow data show no new money buying Gram, and wallet count alone doesn’t show how many of those wallets hold any tokens. Gram’s 20-day moving average, the average closing price over the last 20 days, is around 12% above its price, while its 200-day average is about 43% above. Both averages running above the price signal an ongoing downtrend.
Two key signals could change that outlook. Telegram or a TON blockchain explorer would need to show a growing number of funded wallets, with Grams moving off exchanges into them. Gram would also need to hold around $1, close to its one-year low, and recover to its 20-day average. If both happen, the new wallets could start lifting the Toncoin price. Until then, those wallets remain largely disconnected from any meaningful rise in value.
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Sam Daodu is a crypto analyst and the editor of 24/7 Wall St.'s Crypto Desk, where he covers Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, Solana and the altcoins investors search for most. His work focuses on price levels, spot ETF flows, on-chain data and the regulatory decisions that move crypto markets, written so a first-time buyer and a seasoned trader can both use it.
Sam has written about crypto professionally since 2019 and has published more than 2,000 articles. Before joining 24/7 Wall St., he wrote for crypto media outlets and Web3 companies and ghostwrote for crypto founders and token launches. His analysis is syndicated on Yahoo Finance, MSN and AOL and has been cited by other crypto news sites. He also founded MacLabs Marketing, a content and personal branding agency for crypto founders and executives.
When he isn't reading charts, Sam is usually at the gym or watching One Piece, a series he maintains has better tokenomics than most altcoins.
